The Lessons of “No”

As a children’s book author and reviewer, I participate in a number of online discussion groups. For the past month, one of those groups—the one sponsored by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison—has focused on multicultural literature and specifically the role of humor in multicultural literature. One of the principal participants in this discussion was the lovely and talented Uma Krishnaswami, the author of the delightfully funny Bollywood-inspired middle grade novel The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, among other works,. [Read my review of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything here, along with an author interview: http://www.thepiratetree.com/2011/06/10/blog-tour-the-grand-plan-to-fix-everything/.]

In the online discussion, Uma wrote about her “concerns about what I see as a trend in the direction of oppression and social problem literature defining diversity.” She called on writers to offer more stories about everyday life and its ordinary joys and mishaps, liberally sprinkled with the kind of humor that appeals to readers across cultures and can defuse people’s resistance to the unfamiliar.

That said, I do think it’s important for those who have suffered to be able to tell their stories and to have those stories heard. In fact the conflict between the desire to use humor and optimistic imagery to reach and persuade, versus the need for people to tell their personal stories, lies at the heart of the Academy Award nominated film from Chile, “No.” I saw the film in New York City last month, and look forward to its opening in the Albany area this spring.

“No” portrays a young advertising executive who, out of familial duty, signs on to help the media campaign for a 1988 plebiscite on the NO side, against the continued rule of dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet who scheduled the up or down referendum in response to international pressure. The NO side has been granted 15 uncensored minutes every evening, and the people who have suffered under a decade and a half of brutal dictatorship want to use that time to tell their stories. The advertising executive, René, doesn’t think that stories of loss and suffering will “sell,” so he helps to craft a somewhat vapid but forward-looking campaign using beautiful young actors, catchy tunes, and the slogan that “Happiness will come” under democracy.

Underlying the differences in approach—the need to tell one’s story of suffering versus the use of pleasant images to turn the desire for democracy into a need because democracy is “cool”—are assumptions as to whether the election will be free and fair. If the election is rigged, this will be the only chance the victims have to tell their stories, for the repression and censorship will return in full force. If the election turns out to be free and fair AND young René and his camp are correct in their assumptions about public opinion, there will be an opportunity in the future for those stories to be told.

“No” covers the period in which my YA novel Gringolandia takes place. Many of my friends were involved in the plebiscite. I remember vividly watching videos of the 15-minute NO advertisements, crowded into our tiny bedroom in Madison, Wisconsin—the only room in our house that had a TV—along with my husband, our then-one-year-old son Derrick, Nelson Schwenke and Marcelo Nilo of the “Canto Nuevo” band Schwenke & Nilo (they had brought the video and composed/performed some of the music on it), their U.S. manager, and several Chilean friends who lived in Madison. The film captures well the tenor of debates during that time and how positive, commercial messages trumped images of oppression and suffering during the campaign.

Afterward, there were in fact opportunities to tell the other stories. In the early 1990s a truth commission, the Rettig Commission, investigated the numerous violations of human rights. Books were published, museum exhibits put together. Ultimately, many of the perpetrators were indicted and brought to trial; Pinochet himself died under house arrest in 2006.

I think we need both approaches—the humorous and the serious. Humor works to build bridges across the cultural and political divide (assuming, however, that the jokes are not hurtful to anyone), while people who have suffered should be heard and acknowledged. Without the first, we have little in common; without the latter, grievances fester in silence until they lead to self-destructive behaviors or acts of violence against others.

I plan to explore these themes further in my reviews of multicultural children’s books this month, so stay tuned.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

6 Responses

The No campaign was a rare success in taking on a dictatorship. It succeeded because of a lot of work by the dictatorship’s opponents in the years leading up to the referendum (including singers like Schwenke & Nilo) as well the clever ad campaign shown in the film.

Lyn this is a very good article that reminds us of the many ways that people can learn. I was also interested to read more about your earlier life in Madison before you came to the Capital District.

What the ad campaign in the “No” vote brought to mind in terms of current political activity was the use of puppets in Kenya to satirize past and current political leaders.
The current Presidential election is going on right now and The XyZ theatre [latex puppets] will hopefully have caused people to think about issues of corruption and other policy choices.

The use of puppets seems to have made it okay to criticize Kenyan politicians. Hopefully this level of dissent and use of humor will also help avoid the violence that followed the last Presidential election in Kenya.

Lyn, Do you have a link to either a text or a video of the ad campaign? I’m curious about the messages that they used to motivate the Chilean people to pay attention to what was at stake in the referendum of 1988 and to go out and vote no. That was the begining of the end of a brutal dictator. We might be able to apply some of those lessons in our current world situation.

That’s an amazing video, Lyn. So well produced and with catchy music. I can see how it influenced the vote, while making viewers feel good about a future that would include freedom and liberty. Thanks so much for sharing it!

I thought that it was very timely that you wrote an article about the No vote [and the movie describing it] that brought down brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet of Chile at the same time that new, declassified intelligence records are revealing an international campaign to kill leftist activists and other populist leaders in many countries, including one famous incident in the US. Here’s more on the trial in Argentina that is taking this exploration to new levels. Significantly, Augusto Pinochet was the one who began this campaign.

It’s also important that during the interview a parallel is drawn between the more “low tech” assassination techniques used to kill activists in the late 1970s and 1980s and the current drone killings that we are now debating in the US Senate, which also target people in other countries without benefit of trial and may even kill people here in the US, still unclear as Rand Paul has pointed out during his filibuster.

A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and ’80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as “Operation Condor” involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset.

We’re joined by John Dinges, author of “The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.” The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events